


Seam Ripping

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Gen, Tailoring, Turks (Compilation of FFVII)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 04:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30134091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Someone has to help them dress to kill.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2021





	Seam Ripping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).



'Oi, here we go again, Doc,' Mattie calls out, pushing the door to the workroom open with his shoulder and swivelling inside, arms full of suit bags. 'Here's the latest shipment from up top.'

'Not up top.' Giuseppe pushes his glasses down his nose and looks up from his drafting table to address his apprentice. 'The offices of General Affairs is, technically, downstairs from us. So downstairs they're in basements that aren't on the public schematics, in fact.'

'Ain't they called Administrative Research?' Mattie asks, putting each suit bag up on the tailor's rack used for receiving. The hangers clank gently as they go up on the dark wood rail.

'Departmental naming and re-naming is beyond my expertise,' Giuseppe intones. 'I am just an old man making a living with thread and scissors.' A nominal, if understated, truth: Giuseppe has been tailor to Shinra's elite for so long that people hardly remember a time before he had a domain of his own in Shinra Tower. As with the best bespoke attire, his handiwork is so good it is unnoticeable – if not unnoticed – and he prefers it that way. Mattie, two generations his junior, is Giuseppe's only concession to age: better to let youth struggle with the cutting table.

Mattie snorts as he unzips the first suit bag. 'You're a wizard, is what you are.' He whistles in dismay at the state of the suit within. 'You've gotta be, to get all the blood and skunk off of this lot. Doesn't it hurt you to see pieces you've spent weeks on come back like this?' Mattiew reaches for the box of latex gloves that is always kept near at hand to the receiving rack and snaps on a pair. He gingerly pulls back one sleeve of the blazer on the hanger. The fabric at the cuffs looks damp and darker than black.

Giuseppe gets up and removes his jacket, hanging it over the low back of his work stool. In just his vest and shirtsleeves, he rolls up his cuffs and comes to inspect the damage himself. 'It doesn't hurt me,' he tells Mattie, philosophical. 'These clothes are doing what they were made to do.'

'Kill people?'

'Look good on the people enforcing Shinra's laws,' Giuseppe clucks, looking down his nose at the cuffs. 'Suits don't kill people, unless we're speaking in the vernacular. _Technicalities_ , Matthew. People live and die by them in Midgar; part of your apprenticeship is learning the _nuances_...'

'I'm here to learn the nuances of topstitchin', not politics,' Mattie grumbles.

'If you fail to appreciate politics, you will have no one to dress,' Giuseppe murmurs, somewhat distracted as he inspects the second suit on the rack, pushing at the fabric with the back of his pencil. There is a tear in the shoulder of this one, presumably from some very vigorous activity indeed.

'You spend hours slavin' over these,' Mattie continues his tirade. Giuseppe feels quite touched that he should feel the need to defend the garments this energetically. Not a bad thing to have pride in one's craft, he supposes. Mattie goes on. 'Cuttin' an' fittin' an' refittin'. You're the best in the business, Doc, and it breaks my heart to see them treated like this.'

Giuseppe points his pencil meaningfully at the cleanroom, prompting Mattie to start wheeling the rack over. Another advantage of working for Shinra, in Shinra: facilities are never an issue, even specialised ones.

'They're meant to be treated like this,' he reminds Mattie. 'Stains are removable. Irremovable stains beg the question of why we don't yet have more appropriate, technical fabrics. As for tears, well, that indicates the need for reinforced seams in locations that the average, merely sartorially-minded dresser might not require. This is our craft. None of our pieces are made to be hung up in a closet to be admired, Matthew. They are, quite explicitly, meant to be seen. Both on a person, and on a person _in action._ Now let's get these cleaned up.'

Mattie is already donning a mask and getting out the cleaning chemicals. 'Wonder how much blood we've cleaned up over the years,' he ponders, voice distorted by the filter.

'Not all that much,' Giuseppe says demurely, pulling out the patterns for the two suits in question from where they're hung vertically, better to preserve the integrity of the paper. 'We burn the worst ones; they're usually beyond saving.'

The first of the suits, more messy but less damaged, is the Director's. The second, distressed at the seams and ripped in the shoulder, is their redheaded friend Reno's. Giuseppe can anticipate where both of them put the most wear on their clothes at this point; he's tailored for the Turks since Veld decided intimidation through good dress was a bit of psychological warfare worth expending gil on. He's suited Tseng through growth spurts and injuries and coups.

'Is it true you used to do them up like just any other normal suit?' Mattie asks as he bends over his work. The cleanroom's ventilation fan automatically shudders on, venting out. 'Like the ones the worker ants here in the Shinra building wear all day?'

'Not quite like those off-the-rack monstrosities, but similar in essence, yes,' Giuseppe says, opening his thread drawer and looking for something reinforced for the repair on Reno's shoulder seams. 'Conservative cut, a bit wider in the leg than is fashionable today. Navy. I used to import the fabric from the highlands to the east. It was meant to make them look _almost_ like any other drone, as you say, but also be just different enough to raise the hair on the back of one's head.'

Mattie scrubs away. 'What they call the uncanny valley?'

'If the uncanny valley was filled with the suggestion of your guilt, yes. The Turks have always been auditors, of a sort.'

Mattie snorts. 'No one likes a snitch.'

'They would say that those without guilty consciences ought feel no fear,' Giuseppe smiles. 'Of course, they do much more than that, but they are also most assuredly not _police._ '

That provokes a short and hysterical snort of laughter from Mattie. 'Yeah, I'd say.'

Giuseppe selects a spool of thread and continues with his history lesson. 'The Turks are not SOLDIER, either; nor are they army. They sleep below our feet and stand above our heads. And that is why, my dear Matthew, they have a dress code but _not_ a uniform.'

Notions and material for mending thus prepared and set aside, Giuseppe gets up and dons his own gloves for work in the cleanroom. He lifts the Director's suit from the rack and gets to work on the other side of the table from his apprentice.

Mattie glances up at him, a little furtive. 'Are you ever scared of them, boss?'

'I don't do anything worthy of their attention,' Giuseppe shrugs, fastidiously pre-treating the worst of the stains with a water-based solvent first. 'I also do not ask any questions.'

Mattie grins a little as he works away with an absorbent pad that is duly turning copper. 'Are you telling me off?'

'Not at all,' Giuseppe shakes his head. 'Only reminding you that curiosity killed the cat, and that the only thing satisfaction brought back was its corpse, neatly exhumed by men in bespoke suits. Leave them to their business.'

'You got it, Doc,' Mattie salutes with one gloved hand. 'Don't poke the bogeymen.'

'That being said,' Giuseppe says slyly, looking up and smiling at Mattie. 'You were telling me your landlord constantly refuses to fix the boiler?'

'That's right,' Mattie grumbles. 'It's like I'm living in the Slums! My showers are cold half the time.'

'Write your complaint down on a note,' Giuseppe says. 'Slip it into the Director's pocket when you send the laundered suits up tomorrow.'

Mattie's eyes go wide. 'Seriously, boss?'

'You'd be surprised,' Giuseppe quips, looking back down at the work at hand. 'Shinra looks after its own. Turks like to keep their weapons honed.'

'Their tailors are weapons, now?'

'What else would you call us?'

'Dunno,' Mattie says, looking thoughtful for a moment. 'Armourers, maybe.'

 _That_ makes Giuseppe smile.


End file.
